Traveling with Santana Safecase

I have a trip to Europe this fall and one of the legs of the flight is on an Embraer RJ145 with United Express. Does anyone have any experience flying with the Santana Safecase and this type of aircraft?

Embraer RJ145 -- isn't that one of toy air planes referred to as a Regional Jump Jet or by most as Really Junk Jets.

If so, then I will say it is not adquate for people to fit into if over 5'8". Putting a long bike in the hold...unknown, but doubtful. Worse case, send the case by Greyhound or Amtrack for that segment (assumes careful planning) or just rework the flights to avoid carriers that just junk jets. Recommend SWA if they cover your start and end points as they use real airplanes.

The Santana Safecase isn't all that huge, maybe 1.5x the size of an S&S in depth so likely the only issue will be weight. The Embraer RJ145 is not a prop plane, so usually not a problem. All depends on the airline and if they cram it to capacity... then as with any plane they could start shifting luggage to other flights. When travelling, it's a crapshoot as always with any luggage, schedule, body cavity search...

Be sure to research your luggage fees. As it is a bicycle and flying international, there should be a flat $200 service charge each way, with no overweight (up to 100lbs) or oversize extras on top of that (http://www.united.com/web/en-US/cont...ge/sports.aspx). If the agents hassle you, then get them to call their help desk.

Thanks, twocicle. I have United going out and Lufthansa coming back, so I figured $200 max going and $300 max returning. Then, when I noticed the size of the plan going from Charlotte to Dulles I got worried about getting it there regardless of cost.

Frankly, if your itinerary includes a United flight period, maybe you should read about Dave Carroll's year long nightmare trying to get them to replace, or at least fix, his $3500 Taylor guitar that another passenger saw the baggage handlers THROWING on the tarmac!

It wasn't until he did a fabulous viral video on YouTube called "United Breaks Guitars" that he got their attention at all. He ultimately ended up doing 3 songs about the protracted incident. The story and videos are here. Absolutely entertaining even if you think it's only an isolated incident.

BICYCLE - [bahy-si-kuhl] - Noun :> A medical device used to correct the common geriatric condition of OFS, (Old, Fat & Slow), in a manner that does not induce brain-decaying boredom like walking or running.

Yeah, but really only relevant if traveling with a fullsize case. Even then, anytime you do call to verify they say the equipment type is not guaranteed and may change, ie: "crapshoot".

Flying out of the Spokane airport frequently has the smallest prop planes heading to Seattle. Avoiding those planes with any special sized luggage is best on any trip. Last year with a fullsize tandem case, was especially limiting here, plus we could not fly directly from the UK into a small airport in France because the the plane types there. Another reason we switched back to S&S cases.

Luckily, we had no issues with the fullsize case. Just the typical nervous tension the entire time watching our precious being wheeled across the tarmac. Here's a taboo terminal photo of our case being treated well enough (bottom shelf in photo below) and obviously this was not a prop plane we were boarding.